1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to mapping techniques, and, more particularly, to mapping techniques that are used in localization systems.
2. Description of the Related Art
Autonomous vehicles as well as personal vehicles have to operate safely in a human environment. Such vehicles are employed in the fields of driver assistance systems, systems for autonomous driving, mobile robotics and personal robotics. In order to operate safely, accurate perception of the environment and accurate localization within the environment is required. The perceived two-dimensional and three-dimensional data is used in a mapping process in order to represent the environment in the localization step.
Current sensor systems for three-dimensional perception typically use laser range finders, stereo cameras or three-dimensional range imagers. These sensors are typically very expensive and demanding in terms of computational processing power for signal processing.
Inexpensive localization systems based on, for example, ultrasonic sensors or mono vision have to make assumptions about the structure of the environment in which they are intended to be deployed. Thus, such inexpensive localization systems are generally applicable to only the simplest of environments or they suffer from low robustness caused by violations of the model assumptions.
What is neither disclosed nor suggested in the art is a mapping method that overcomes the above-described problems with known mapping methods.